Another book recommended by an Indian friend. He thinks Ghosh is one of the best Indian writers ever. This was my first Ghosh.

It's about a Bengali extended family in Calcutta (a good dozen characters with many more on the fringes), centering on the life story of one man who loses a cousin to sudden and mysterious ethnic violence. The whole thing is tied together by the fact that this cousin is himself a mysterious, fascinating, erudite, and compassionate person, who always has a story or an insight, and you never know where he'll show up.

A more esoteric theme of the book is the nature of memory (he's as good as Nabokov on this), but I won't go into that at the moment.

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Love your review of The Shadow Lines. Would you be interested in putting a question about the book to the author Amitav Ghosh at a recording of the BBC World Book Club on the World Service. If you emailed it to me katy.anderson@bbc.co.uk we will read it out next week at our recording or even ask you to record it for us on the telephone. Many thanks and look forward to hearing from you.

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